With the recent flurry of news regarding Rob Zombie’s upcoming Halloween sequel H2, I was reminded of another project that the man had been working on over for the past few years that just seemed to fall off the radar. No, I’m not talking about Tyrannosaurus Rex, although that does sound intriguing. Back in 2006, Zombie started work on a feature-length animated movie based on his underground comic The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, about a washed up Mexican wrestler in the creepy world of Monsterland. With Paul Giamatti voicing one of the main characters, and well-known artists/animators Mr. Lawrence and Carey Yost co-directing and co-writing, it’s surprising that a lot of people don’t even know this film exists. A quick search around the web reveals that the movie was actually completed as of late 2008. So why has it not been released yet?

In an interview with IGN from a couple of weeks ago, Zombie reveals that there are some “ownership and legal issues” holding the movie back at the moment. The movie was originally picked up for distribution by Anchor Bay early in the process, and the animation was actually handled by Film Roman Productions, which is owned by Starz! Media. I don’t quite understand what could have gone wrong along the way, but Zombie had this to say:

“It came out awesome… That started off as this little tiny half-a-million dollar direct-to-video movie that expanded into this $10 million animated extravaganza. And it’s awesome, but I don’t have a release date yet. It’s like an R-rated adult/monster/sex comedy. There’s nothing really like it that I can think of. People always say like Ralph Bakshi’s stuff, butâ€¦ It’s [more] like if SpongeBob and Scooby-Doo were filthy.”

Defamer got to see a sneak peek of it last year and informs us that there is plenty of nudity. Apparently there is still a chance that it might get released theatrically, so hopefully we’ll get to see it sometime this year. Keep your fingers crossed folks, and stay tuned to the official site for updates.

Around the Web:

Yeah I know that Anchor Bay officially changed their name to Starz not too long ago, so I thought it might be related to that. But Starz actually owned them a couple years ago before that already, so it doesn’t really make sense.

http://myspace.com/destrox71689 Mr. Colomy

fuck that “legal” matters shit. i want anchor bay and starz to get their shit in order. i, as well as many others have been waiting for 3 years to see this movie. the anticipation is killing me!